Southeast Louisiana Hospital may be kept open, St. Tammany president says

The state's plan to begin phasing down operations at Southeast Louisiana Hospital near Mandeville on Oct. 1 remains in effect, but St. Tammany Parish President Pat Brister said Thursday that a meeting earlier in the day with officials from the state's Department of Health and Hospitals at least gives her some hope that a majority of services for the mentally ill will remain on the north shore. "It's not as dire as their first iteration of (the plan)," she said, noting that the state seems amenable to working with the parish to keep services in place. "But we're not out of the woods."

David Grunfeld, The Times-Picayune archiveSoutheast Louisiana Hospital, photographed in 2008, will soon begin phasing down its daily operations in preparation for closure as part of an $859 million cut to the state's federal Medicaid program.

The state will start moving patients in intermediate beds -- 94 of the hospital's 176 total beds -- to other state-run facilities in less than two months, she said. Yet, that doesn't mean that the hospital will close or that other services will be lost, Brister said she learned from DHH Secretary Bruce Greenstein during a 90-minute meeting Thursday in Baton Rouge.

She said DHH is hoping that a private company will request to buy the facility and run the remaining services or enter into a cooperative endeavor agreement with the state that allows the company to run the facility, with the state retaining ownership of the Southeast campus.

In an interview after the meeting, Greenstein said that while the department is looking for partnerships to "keep beds on the north shore" the final outcome may not involve the Mandeville-area campus. In the end, beds may be moved to other hospitals in the area that already provide psychiatric services, Greenstein said. Plans for the acute-care beds are expected to shape up within the next three months.

Story by

Christine Harvey

and Jeff Adelson

Staff writers

Greenstein told Brister that three companies already had contacted DHH with interest in running the hospital, so she said she is hopeful that the deal can be brokered by June 30, which is the end of the fiscal year. The state would save $555,000 this year by closing the hospital in phases beginning in October.

Brister said last week that she would consider offering the state the $555,000 it needs to keep the hospital's doors open if it meant the parish could buy some time to ensure that psychiatric services remain close to the parish's residents. She said she did not offer the state the money Thursday, as she believes that a private company could begin servicing patients at Southeast by the end of June.

Though the state is moving the intermediate beds to its other facilities that help the mentally ill -- Eastern Louisiana Mental Hospital in Jackson and Central Louisiana State Hospital in Pineville -- the other 82 beds could remain at the Southeast campus, as could agencies such as the Methodist Home for Children and Operation Jumpstart, Brister said.

She said DHH related its success with a similar plan elsewhere in the state, so she is optimistic that the plan will work in St. Tammany Parish.

'Working collaboratively'

There are no short-term plans to displace those other entities located on the same property as Southeast Louisiana Hospital, Greenstein said.

There is not yet a plan in place for the campus if the hospital itself is closed down, though Greenstein noted that selling the property would require the approval of the Legislature. He pledged the department would continue to work with representatives from the area as the process moves forward.

"We're working collaboratively with the delegation to do something that benefits patients using mental health care services and the patients community," Greenstein said.

State Sen. Jack Donahue, R-Covington, also attended the meeting, as did Reps. Tim Burns, R-Mandeville, and Scott Simon, R-Abita Springs, and chairman of the Health and Welfare Committee in the House.

The state announced its plan to close Southeast at a news conference last month, without notifying the officials in St. Tammany Parish, or its legislative delegation. Officials said the hospital would close as a result of reduced federal financing for the state's Medicaid program.

Donahue has said he isn't sure the plan is legal and asked the state attorney general's office for an opinion as to whether Gov. Bobby Jindal had the authority to close the hospital. Greenstein said on Thursday that legal staff had reviewed the plans and that he was confident they were legal. He declined to speculate on what would happen if the opinion, which is nonbinding, goes against the department.

He also wants to know what will happen to the $6.5 million the parish spent earlier this year to buy land adjacent to the hospital for use as a future mitigation bank. The money from that sale was to be used to fund the hospital's maintenance and operations.

Big need in parish cited

Among the many reasons why St. Tammany Parish officials are loathe to see the hospital close is the fact that it has one of the highest suicide rates in the state. Yet of the 774 people who came through Southeast last year, just 135, or 17 percent, were from St. Tammany, St. Washington, Tangipahoa, Livingston and St. Helena parishes combined.

Nearly 33 percent of the patients at Southeast last year came from the south shore, with a total of 21 percent of patients -- or 163 people -- coming from Orleans Parish alone. Earlier, the state closed the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital and transferred those patients to Southeast.

Brister and the St. Tammany Parish Council formalized their opposition to the plan to shutter the mental hospital, with the council passing a resolution earlier this month objecting to the closure and requesting that Jindal rescind the plan in the interest of the health and safety of the citizens of St. Tammany, the New Orleans area and the entire state.

Kliebert said the closure plan has always been a part of DHH's strategy, with the idea being to reduce the agency's footprint in the state by transferring that responsibility to the private sector.